Balanced Payments shuts down, offers Stripe alternative

Late last week, Balanced Payments announced it would be shutting its doors and ceasing processing of all credit card, debit card, and ACH payments for its API integrated customers in about 90 days.

The company has arranged a relationship with its rival, Stripe, who will honor all existing pricing contracts. This arrangement is intended to assist the businesses now scrambling to move their integrations in the 3-month timeframe.

How are you accepting payments?

But is Stripe, the hyped Valley startup, the only and best alternative option for these companies? Maybe.

Alternatively, it might be a good opportunity to review your integration needs and potentially find a product that’s a better fit. After all, the big names on the block – Braintree, now part of PayPal, and Stripe – aren’t the only options. Other, lesser known payment APIs might actually better serve some of your niche needs, such as subscription billing, payment plans, customer data management, or echeck processing.

Another big differentiator that isn’t talked about (because it’s not commonly offered) is transaction revenue sharing. Although the payment API provides the functionality to process the payment, the software company owns the relationship with the customer and is facilitating the transaction. As such, the software company should have opportunity to earn revenue from it. This note is for sure a self-promotion, as we are the only company I am aware of offering this benefit. But, our integrated partners love this perk, and we want these growing software and solution providers to know it IS available, however uncommon.

If you’re looking to get a rundown of Stripe alternatives before doing the re-integration work, here’s a quick breakdown of leading and lesser known payment APIs based on some of their more specialized features:

Sarah Jordan is the VP of Marketing for PaySimple, the leading provider of service commerce solutions for SMBs. At PaySimple, Sarah leads the company's brand, acquisition, lifecycle, and product marketing strategies, and has been an integral player in growing the company from a fledgling startup to a leading SaaS platform, serving over 15,000 businesses across the country. She loves live music, being outside, great food, and hanging out with her husband, little boy, and dog.